Houellebecq’s Last Warning

It has become a bit of a cliché to point out that Michel Houellebecq is something of a prophet. The 68-year-old French writer’s debut novel Whatever (1994) gave us Raphael Tisserand – a 28-year-old virgin who considers murdering a couple on a beach out of sexual jealousy. Houellebecq published this nearly 20 years before Eliot Rodger brought the plight of the “incel” to international attention. His novel Platform (2001) depicted an Islamic terror attack at a sex resort in Thailand, published shortly before the 9/11 attacks, and a similar attack at a tourist resort in Bali. In The Map and the Territory (2010) Houellebecq foresaw the spread of assisted suicide clinics, and more recently in Serotonin (2019), he seemed to predict the “yellow vest” protests in France.